2026 case-study reporting · year-over-year comparison
Product-led growth · paid media & activation
Paid search built for users who come back.
B2B SaaS
For a freemium collaboration platform, the value of a sign-up depends on what happens next. DBM aligned Mural’s Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Meta work around product activation, brand demand, and the path from a first visit to an engaged user.
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Reporting period: 2026 case-study reporting · comparison windows vary by measure
With less than one quarter of search spend
European visual-tool searches versus the account average
Competitor-comparison searches versus the account average
Source: DBM’s Mural paid-media case-study reporting. The conversion-rate gain is two percentage points, not a 2% relative increase. Brand results describe a share of returning users and spend, not incremental lift. Search-theme cost and sign-up-rate comparisons use the account average. These are paid-media results, not SEO outcomes, and should not be combined into a single growth rate. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Behind the headline
Why the lowest sign-up cost did not always mean the best users
| Search segment | Cost-per-sign-up rank | Cost-per-day-1-return rank |
|---|---|---|
| Brand searches | 4 | 1 |
| Mind maps · US & Canada | 5 | 2 |
| Competitor comparisons | 3 | 3 |
| Whiteboard · US & Canada | 8 | 4 |
| Templates & use cases | 2 | 5 |
| Automated campaigns | 7 | 6 |
| Mind maps · Europe | 1 | 7 |
| Flowcharts & diagrams | 9 | 8 |
| Whiteboard · Europe | 6 | 9 |
| Product-team searches | 10 | 10 |
One reported month in 2026. Rank 1 means the lowest cost among these ten segments. Rankings compare cost efficiency, not actual costs or growth over time.
Challenge
Where the account stood
A low-cost registration can look successful in an ad platform while producing few engaged users. Mural needed to distinguish sign-up volume from return visits and adoption, protect valuable brand searches from competitors, and investigate landing-page mismatches that interrupted activation.
Approach
What DBM did
DBM compared cost per sign-up with cost per returning user, then reviewed search themes, brand coverage, ad copy, and landing-page routing against that fuller picture. Product activation signals and Salesforce stages gave acquisition reviews context beyond the initial registration.
Separated sign-ups by company SSO, day-1 and day-7 return, and free versus paid plan. Reviewed Salesforce qualification and meeting stages alongside product events, with activation signals feeding back into advertising measurement.
Reviewed brand competition, bidding flexibility, ad assets, and comparison-page sitelinks so visitors evaluating alternatives could find Mural’s product information.
Analyzed nearly 1,000 headlines within keyword themes. Verb-led headlines were associated with roughly 30% lower cost per conversion, with that pattern appearing in eight of nine themes. Those observations informed copy decisions rather than being presented as a controlled lift test.
Traced weak next-day return performance in a process-diagram ad group to a sales-page destination. Corrected the routing to the relevant product page instead of assuming the ad itself needed a rebuild.
Maintained search coverage and exclusions through weekly reviews. The reported 12-week activity included 2,511 negative keywords added, 1,642 keywords added, 283 keywords paused, 138 ad-copy changes, and 57 target CPA adjustments.
Investigated sharp account-wide activation changes as possible measurement issues before making broad budget cuts. Monitoring also flagged a stopped conversion upload so affected figures could be treated cautiously.
What the analysis showed
Ad-copy decisions grounded in the account’s own data
Assets were compared within keyword themes so the team could distinguish language associated with sign-ups from language that mainly generated clicks.
| Observed copy pattern | Reported finding |
|---|---|
| Verb-led headlines | About 30% lower cost per conversion; pattern present in 8 of 9 themes |
| Security and enterprise wording | 40% lower cost per conversion |
| ‘Easy’ in descriptions | 28% lower click-through rate and 8% higher cost per conversion |
| Concrete product descriptions in callouts | More than 10× lower cost per conversion than abstract business language |
2026 asset-level analysis. These are observed associations within the account, not controlled experiments or universal copywriting benchmarks. In the search-segment table above, rank 1 means the lowest cost; ranks are not absolute costs or a before-and-after trend.
Account operations
The ongoing work behind the account
Reported activity across a 12-week period
Negative keywords added
Keywords added · 283 paused
Ad-copy changes
Target CPA adjustments
Monitoring & judgment
Check the measurement before changing the budget
A sudden account-wide drop in next-day returns—to roughly one quarter of recent levels—prompted an import and event-definition review. A broad, simultaneous change can be a measurement issue, so the team avoided treating the decline as proof that every campaign had weakened.
- STEP 01
Check how day-1 returns are counted and whether conversion uploads are running.
- STEP 02
Use sign-ups and cost per sign-up provisionally while activation data is investigated.
- STEP 03
Recheck the affected period before making decisions from the return-user figures.
Services involved
What made this work
More customer results
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